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He sits her down with a very concerned look on his face. Clara's almost worried, except the last time he looked that concerned, he was telling her that her favorite tea was going to be discontinued in seventy years' time. When she'd gently broken the news that she, too, would likely be discontinued in seventy years' time, he'd gotten huffy, flustered, and maybe a little sadder than she'd expected him to get.
So she smiles patiently, like posing for a particularly serene portrait, and watches as he scrapes a heavy wooden chair across the floor and sits in front of her. “Clara,” he begins dourly. “I have some news. I'm not sure how you'll take it.”
“I'm sure it's all right,” she says. She takes his hands in hers, stroking the backs of them with her thumbs. He looks so very concerned. Her favorite biscuits are probably going to be recalled for food poisoning in a century or two.
“I'm pregnant.”
The smile freezes on her face, she glances down at her stomach, and then stares straight at him. Her voice coming out slightly squeaky, she asks, “I'm pregnant?”
The Doctor sighs, flashing a frustrated scowl before shaking his head. “No. I'm pregnant.”
“Oh,” she says, calming down. But only for a moment. “Sorry, what?” He throws his hands up and stands, walking away quickly. Backtrack, Oswald, she thinks. “Sorry, sorry, I'm just. Surprised to hear that I could have gotten you. Because I can't make. I mean. And we used protection. This is not a negative statement of judgment on the, uh, the fact of. Of your pregnancy.” She cringes, stopping herself before she sounds even more like a complete prat. She doesn't want to sound like one. She's only surprised, given she doesn't have what she'd thought was necessary to put any buns in any ovens.
“Right,” he says. He runs a hand through his hair; this wasn't going the way he'd hoped, she realizes, and she stands up and goes to him. Makes it right before he thinks she's rejecting him.
Wrapping her arms around his waist, she says, “Sorry. Of our pregnancy.” She looks up at him, hoping he'd meet her eyes, smiling when he does. “You're pregnant? This is a good thing, yes?”
He sighs again, but this time it's with relief. “Yes,” he said with a smile. “Very good.”
*
The Doctor sits her down again, but this time she's a little more prepared for what's happening and he's a little more prepared for her questions. “So how does it work?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Similar to your own human pregnancies, really.”
“Okay, with the whole two bits of genetic material, fertilization, nine month's baking and out pops a baby,” she says. “Pretty straightforward up to that point, I'm with you. But the part I don't get—how did I get you pregnant when I don't, um. Come? In the way that's needed? Like, don't you need a partner to do the whole-” She makes a motion a bit hand-wavey, a cross between tossing one off and shoving something inside somewhere.
A little more prepared isn't quite the same thing as prepared, and he's scrunching his face up, looking at some spot of nothing over her shoulder, taking a deep breath. “Pregnancy,” he finally says. “Pregnancy pregnancy, pregnancy—pregnancy pregnancy. Pregnancy-”
“Doctor, you're only saying the word 'pregnancy' over and over again.”
“Ah,” he says with a knowing frown, “too complex for the TARDIS to translate.”
Clara presses her lips into a thin line. It doesn't really matter how it happened, she supposes, at least not until they're ready to talk family planning. It's been barely five minutes since she's found out they're having a first child, and her head's spinning from that alone—she wants kids, she knew that in a theoretical way, and some nights she'd thought about it in a day-dreamy way with this man, just as she'd thought about it in a day-dreamy way with Danny. But her life with Danny had been cut down before they could even begin to talk about it and she'd assumed that her life with the Doctor would be too strange and dangerous—strangerous, for short—for them to have kids, so she'd kept up with her birth control and they'd used condoms as well. “Still,” she says. “Not that I'm not happy, I'm only curious—were we not safe?”
“Eh,” he says. He cringes slightly, in a bug-eyed sort of way. “You were safe. My body decided it had other things in mind. Apparently the pill and rubber method doesn't work on Gallifreyans bent on producing a child.”
“Hang on, bent on—so this is sort of a biological clock thing? Your body decided it was time for a kid, so it made a kid?”
“More like, um.” His cheeks are an adorable shade of pink currently, the shade of pink Clara likes putting on him by teasing or being overly lovey. “Like it saw you, saw me, and decided I had the best prognosis for surviving a human-Gallifreyan pregnancy. And then it made a kid.”
“Doctor,” she says slowly. “Did you want a child?”
His palms are flat on his knees, and he's biting his lower lip, not quite meeting her eyes as he nods. “Yes. It's just difficult for humans to carry to term.”
It's said with the weight of personal knowledge, though she's not quite sure what that knowledge is and isn't certain he's able to share. Clara sits back and looks at him carefully. “Right. So, we're pregnant. Do you need anything?”
The Doctor stands and nods, straight-backed and looking as professional and detached as possible. “I would like a hug.”
She grins and nearly jumps into his arms. “I can do that,” she says, burrowing her face against his chest as he slowly melts his arms around her.
*
Gallifreyan pregnancy leads to a lot of napping, it turns out.
They've decided to stay together floating through time and space in the TARDIS, only touching down once in a while to escape the perils of cabin fever, and the Doctor spends a lot of time snoozing. Clara's fine with this, as the TARDIS is big enough that she can find her own things to do, and they touch down sometimes where she last left earth so she can see her friends fairly regularly. Besides, she's finding, for whatever reason, maybe it's just a normal thing when one and one's partner is expecting, that she'd rather hang out with the Doctor most of the time. He's carrying her child, after all. Most days, she can't stop watching him, marveling at what's going on inside him.
He thinks he's about three months into the pregnancy, his skinny frame barely starting to show; when Clara joins him on his sleep adventures, she curls up behind him, slips her hand under his t-shirt, and rests it right on that bump. His whole body will change, he'd explained, had already started changing the moment it had decided that he'd be the childbearer between the two of them. And the translation matrix had cooperated with his slightly dumbed down explanation of the hows—any genetic material from her would do in a pinch, so the simple act of, well, any act without a condom, which had been quite a few acts over the course of their courtship, could have done it. Closer to the six month mark, he'll be physically able to give birth, and afterwards his body will shift back. It's fascinating stuff to her, this idea that a body could change so much for pregnancy, until he reminds her, “Your bodies change quite a bit too, don't they?”
She's fine with it being his body that changes. Tells him this. Giggles a little when he unexpectedly hums happily in agreement.
*
“Clara,” he whispers one day. “Could you make me a souffle?”
It's a strange request; usually, he turns his nose up at her cooking, declaring that her skills in out-clevering the cleverest bad guy more than make up for her inability to cook when she looks miffed about it. But he's curled up on the arm chair, reading something he's probably read a thousand times before, and he's whispering to her as she works on some knitting. (Knitting is new to her. She's decided that she might try to knit their baby a nice blanket. Mostly it looks like she's knitting the child a nice lump of loosely connected yarn.)
“Sure,” she says, blinking in surprise.
The next month keeps her baking nearly every other day. Napping and eating, that's what makes up Gallifreyan pregnancies. He's sorry for the amount of work he's putting her through—“It's not work,” she says, smoothing down his hair as he shovels down forkful after forkful of pancakes drowning in maple syrup. “I like cooking.”
“I like eating,” he says around a mouthful of food. It's all sweet carby food, except for when it's protein. They touch down in America just to get chicken and waffles a few times from a takeaway he likes. She tries not to show her horror at the very concept.
Soon enough, she's putting fruit smoothies down in front of him next to whatever baked goods he's asked for. “You should probably be a little more healthy,” she says, pushing a mango strawberry concoction his way.
The Doctor looks up at her sheepishly, and starts slurping away at the smoothie as she sits down. “Thank you.”
It strikes her then just how domestic this is. They have a little home that they can take wherever they like, a baby on the way, and whenever they're in bed together, he's making sure that she curls up as closely as possible—it's unlike him, or at least the him that existed before pregnancy, when he would sprawl on his own side and get up and leave for hours at a time nearly every night. It's going to be a few more years of this, decades even; a different kind of adventure, an exhilaration of its own. She smiles at him from across the table.
He notices. “What?” he asks, slightly self-conscious.
“Nothing,” she says with a laugh. “Go on. Drink up.”
*
They keep going just that way. The bump she'd loved putting her hand on keeps getting bigger and rounder, the Doctor keeps asking for more and more little requests like extra pillows, a back rub here and there, help finding a comfortable position (and a comforting shoulder to rest on, on those days and nights when he can't). Gallifreyan pregnancies involve naps, eating, and ever increasing discomfort—but she watches him sometimes, catches him looking happier than he's ever looked in her presence.
It's not long before he's calling, “Clara! Come, there's something amazing-”
She's racing through corridors, having been working in their little garden, she's stripping off dirty gloves and dropping them to the ground as she runs. The TARDIS helpfully puts the two of them close to each other and she skids to a halt outside their bedroom. “You okay?” she asks, catching her breath.
He's absolutely glowing, sitting in the only chair he likes these days, staring down at his belly in wonder, his hand over one spot in particular. “Yes,” he says. He smiles up at her. “Come.”
She goes; he takes her hand in his, places over the spot he'd just been touching. That's their baby, kicking a bit, enough for her to tell. He'd felt it himself long before, but this is the first time Clara's feeling it, and somehow it makes the whole thing even more real. She kneels in front of him, head in his lap, her hand stroking softly where she'd just felt their child.
*
In the end, they go back to earth. Kate raises one eyebrow at the Doctor, asks, “You didn't think to call and tell me?”
He pulls out his mobile and dials her number. “Surprise,” he says once she picks up. “Ha ha ha.”
She sighs deeply while staring blankly at him, puts her phone away, and looks at Clara. “How long have you put up with this?”
Clara links arms with the Doctor. “I don't mind it.”
It's the Doctor's turn to raise an eyebrow. “See? She doesn't mind it.”
“You're quite the pair,” Kate says, as she leads them to the medical ward.
It's all quite safe, the Doctor had assured Clara. He just thought it might be even safer with more people around, just in case. Clara's happy enough with that—truth be told, she'd been getting more and more worried the closer they got to his delivery date, wondering if she'd be able to do it on her own. The idea of coming to UNIT had never crossed her mind, so she's glad it had crossed his.
They're in a nice little private suite, having found the most comfortable position possible on the bed. “So,” she says. “I was thinking we should get a house somewhere. It'll be easier if the little one wants to bring friends by.”
“Hmm,” he says. “Hmm.”
“You don't think so?”
“No, I agree,” he says quickly. “Except I was thinking the TARDIS could suffice. Change up the appearance, nobody would be the wiser.”
"Even if I thought you could actually do it—" she ignores his offended glare—“it'd be weird not to see that old police box. Plus, what if we wanted to go somewhere? Can't exactly fly your house away.”
He looks at her, mock-indignant. “I can and I do, regularly.”
She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean. If we're raising a child in 21st century London, we'll need a place nearby.”
The Doctor nods. “I can buy one in town.”
Clara sits up slightly in surprise. “Really? They can get expensive. You have the money for it?”
“Dunno. Only Kate set up a bank account for me with back pay and interest-” He frowns, says a number.
Clara tries not to let her eyes go too wide. “Yeah. You have the money for it.”
*
She's not quite sure how the delivery actually works—there are, contrary to what the Doctor had told her months ago, some rather startling and major differences—but once it's done there's a screaming, strong baby boy, a tired and sweat-soaked Time Lord and his stunned human partner gazing at them both like they're all the stars in the universe, and doctors and nurses congratulating the entire family for existing. The whole thing is a bit of a blur, which makes her happy that her very, very, immensely confused but generally cheerful father is there to take photos and video for posterity.
The one thing they'd never discussed, not really, was names. They hadn't even known the sex of the child before birth, hadn't wanted to, and the names conversations they'd had had always dissolved into strange jokes, like naming the kid Honus or something equally dire.
Now, though, the Doctor is holding him in his arms, and Clara is curled up next to them with her head on the Doctor's shoulder, and the Doctor says, “I was thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“Danny.” She sits up and looks at him, feeling as though her heart is going to burst from her chest all of a sudden. He goes on, says, “I want him to be a good man.”
She smiles, kisses their little boy on his chubby little cheek, kisses the Doctor on his sharp one. “I like it,” she says.
“Danny it is,” he murmurs, and that's it, then.